Thesis (1996)
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Thesis Movie Review
Thesis (Tesis) is a 1996 Spanish horror thriller film directed by Alejandro Amenabar and starring Ana Torrent. It’s such an intense movie.
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“My name is Angela.
They’re going to kill me“
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A Spanish film student finds a videotape showing the torture and murder of a missing student. I was really happy with how this movie turned out. It’s a very diverse film as it’s a horror thriller with strong crime mystery elements, but it’s above all else genuinely suspenseful and truly disturbing in a couple of chilling scenes.
The most impressive thing about this film is how it treats its subject matter. That is what makes it a truly sophisticated, but also edgy viewing experience. For a movie about snuff movies that represent the worst and most depraved and inhuman part of humanity, it is surprisingly devoid of truly graphic, horrendous sequences. Some of those start the film for sure, but then the attention is directed toward true terror, which is the expectancy of the worst, making the picture incredibly suspenseful.
I was honestly really disturbed and frightened in a couple of hard-hitting scenes, especially those surrounding the videotapes themselves and the various black-and-white footage that was so creepy to me. I also have to strongly praise the sophistication of its themes. The snuff movie itself was well explained to us (maybe even too well) and the whole film school angle was excellent. What deserves special praise is the psychosexual aspect to it as the protagonist is actually sexually attracted toward violence and the idea of serial killers. That aspect made it especially complex and even more depraved.
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Ana Torrent is fantastic. Her acting is consistently believable and wonderful. Angela is such a complex woman who is always scared and timid, but also truly curious about the darkest corners of humanity and at the end she even gets sexual arousal from it. Her journey to move away from that dangerous fetish in a way is what made her arc simply compelling. On the other hand, she was too dumb in certain moments, which made some scenes very implausible.
Fele Martinez as Bosco is very good, but I personally found it somewhat disappointing that he ended up being the killer. It was an interesting choice to have us believe that he is too obvious to be a killer, but then to have him be the killer at the end. I still have mixed thoughts about it, especially in regards to the horror chase scenes that felt too clichéd for this very authentic movie besides that.
I loved Eduardo Noriega’s Chema. He was this very realistic nerd character who has a darker edge to him, but is at the end of the day a good person. The relationship between the two was wonderful and very well realized, especially the very sweet ending that finally led to their first date. Jorge Castro, the professor, was incredibly creepy and menacing (the reveal scene in the office was the film’s best, most intense scene) while Figueroa himself was quite a tragic figure that served as an incredibly intriguing, dark catalyst for the entire story to unfold.
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Tesis is very well shot, well written in script and dialogue and mostly believable in its elaborately structured twists and turns. The film flies by how fun it is while the direction from Alejandro Amenabar is outstanding. It is hard to imagine that this was his debut. It just goes to show that he’s one of Spain’s most precious cinematic commodities.
